The first post covers the science of why potatoes work…from big and rapid weight loss to steady but sustained loss by eating less overall, to plain old maintenance: from doing a potato only diet periodically, to just upping your overall potato consumption in your diet and eating less overall as a consequence. I encourage you to read that post, but here’s 1,000 words worth.

Notice potato chips way down there on the bottom, both predicted and experimentally. “You can’t eat just one” was indeed a prophetic marketing slogan. But then, to see how experimentally, boiled potatoes blow everything else out of the water—including the prediction—is truly a remarkable finding that’s largely ignored in general, and derided and scoffed at by the low-carbohydrate community.

So, the takeaway is that boiled potatoes as a single food source are the most satiating food ever tested. That means that when eaten by themselves—compared with equivalent calories of anything else—test subjects waited longer to eat again and consumed less when they did eat, compared to any other single food. But that’s not all. When boiled potatoes are included as part of a meal (even mashed with sane amounts of butter & milk), test subjects consume far fewer calories overall in the meal, compared with any other starch…and I’d bet that would hold for any side dish. Your plate full of “leafy greens” that’s always all the rage in LC, where LCers eat more “leafy greens” than literally anyone else on the planet, including raw vegans? It’s a badge of honor; and plus, it allows them to up that steak from 6-8 oz. to 16 oz., thereby tripling the calories over a meal of mashed potatoes and a 4-6 oz. steak.

The Surprising 13-pound Weight Drop In Four Days

This wasn’t envisioned to be part of this post, but because of my utter mouth-gaping shock last Thursday, it has to be addressed preliminarily so that you clearly understand what it is, what it isn’t, and don’t feel hustled…because that’s what’s typically in play with those sorts of extraordinary claims.

Let’s get this out of the way, right away: It was way mostly water. I’d guess probably 11 pounds of water and 2 pounds of fat (performance at the gym was better than Sunday, so it ‘ain’t any lean that counts). I estimate 2 pounds because sustained weight loss from commenters in the past seemed to average 1/2 pound daily. The diet began last Sunday around noon, and Tuesday was the big whoosh! day, and without thirst. I knew I was dumping lots of water. Before going to the gym where I weighed in, I was expecting somewhere around a 5-pound loss. Nice surprise.

But what does it mean?

It means that even though 80%+ of my calories came from cellular carbohydrate in the form of plain boiled potatoes (salt, sometimes vinegar too), I was running significantly enough of a daily caloric deficit that I was depleting glycogen, lowering generalized inflammation, etc. As you know from Low Carbohydrate Dietary Holy Grails, muscle and liver glycogen (the storage form of carbohydrate) is bound up with significant water and when you restrict carbohydrate enough, glycogen depletes, releasing that water. But here’s what they probably either didn’t tell you, or it was simply convenient if you weren’t clear about it. Glycogen depletion is fundamentally a function of significantly lower food intake than energy output, regardless of macronutrient mix. It can be done three ways:

Sustained exercising for long enough, with little to no carbohydrate intake. Long distance runners call it “hitting the wall.”

Eating significantly less than you expend in energy, chronically. That’s calorie counting diets or starvation.

Eating less carbohydrate than required to store or sustain glycogen. In other words, you can be in an excess energy intake state and still deplete glycogen and “lose weight,” theoretically.

Compare the three and chew on them from a physiological, evolutionary standpoint. The first two make perfect sense. The third has overtones of a gimmick, don’t you think? It may be perfectly fine to have somewhat depleted glycogen and eat low carb. But isn’t it a bit convenient when a person could initially go on a low-carbohydrate diet and overeat—even put on some fat weight in the process—but if glycogen is topped off at the start, then depletion and water loss might outweigh the fat accumulation from the new high-fat diet eaten to excess? And they’re jumping for joy. …Well, for ten days or so, anyway (I’m still shedding water, incidentally, 7th day in).

The big question for me is, how much glycogen/water is optimal or ok-fine? And, does a heavy-on-potato diet that keeps you satiated and not prone to overeat, result in a less than fully topped off glycogen stores and less water? I guess I’ll find out because I’m on this bus for a long time. Boiled potatoes will now always form a mainstay of my diet, from here out.

Prolonged intense exercise (glycogen is depleted first, then you move into fat stores) or very long moderate exercise, like a day of hiking with lots of ascents.

Carbohydrate restriction.

But again, look at those first four in the context of evolution, compared with carbohydrate restriction. Still kind of gimmicky, and I’ll tell you why. Ketosis is plain and simple a starvation adaptation (just like gluconeogenesis—making sugar for the brain from protein). All those items, 1-4, are simply lesser modes or corollaries of starvation. Acute starvation, if you like.

…Conversely, de novo lipogenesis (making fat from carbohydrate) is rather an opposite. It’s a times-of-plenty adaptation to enable storage of fat when carbohydrate food sources are in abundance, like fruit in the summer and fall, before less available food during winter. Since the adaptation exists—but is meaningless unless 1) calories are in abundance, and 2) carbohydrate is a principle source of that abundance—it has been convenient to allow low-carbers to believe that almost any amount beyond trace in the diet will get pushed into fat storage, even in energy deficit! I address that in more depth here: A Mild Critique of the Low-Carb-Diet Encouragement to Add Fat.

Let’s go one gimmick further, though. Lots of people don’t show much in the way of ketones, even on a traditional Atkins Diet. That was me. I wanted to drop 10-15 pounds back in about 1991 (30 yo), so that was my first reading of Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution (it wasn’t “New,” yet). No matter what, I never, ever peed more than light pink. Except once. Years later, like 1996, I went on an all-day hike with plenty of ascents. I was low carbing and brought along some cheese & slices of pepperoni for the hike. Evidently, it wasn’t enough, because even into the afternoon of the next day, I was peeing dark purple. The only time ever. Ever.

See, it’s a survival adaptation under conditions of starvation or extended exertion under inadequate food to fuel the activity. Nothing magical about it. I did not hear angels in purple robes trumpeting from the heavens.

You can be in solid ketosis on a pure sugar diet if your intake is low enough for long enough. Say, 600 kcal deficit for a few days. Test ketones. You’ll have them. Now pay close attention:

You know that those ketones are a by-product of burning your fat storage and not dietary fat because you aren’t eating any fat.

Let’s compare that to low-carbohydrate, but especially, the most recent iteration of ketones-tell-the-whole-story ketogenic diet. Most simply, how do you know the ketones are from metabolizing the fat you’re eating, or the fat you have stored? Of what particular merit are the fingerprints of fat burning, if you don’t know whose hand to shake? A typical, conservative LC diet is going to come in at about 60%+ calories from fat (just beef alone, without adding fat, is about 50/50 fat/protein calories). Get the carbohydrate low enough and you might be lucky to see significant ketones (unlike me). But, another rub: what if the satisfaction of the LC diet induces you to eat less energy (partially to credit for lots of people with successfully sustained weight loss on LC)? Are the ketones a solid product of carbohydrate restriction, or of the acute quasi-starvation I already addressed, or some of both? What fat is being metabolized and throwing off ketones?

It gets worse. “The New Ketogenic Diet” appears to advocate something like 85% fat, 10% protein, and no more than 5% carbohydrate. And everyone jumps for joy because finally, objectively, unabashedly they detect lots and lots of ketones! No more of this trace stuff. They are indeed burning fat. Well, duh! When 85% of your diet consists of a single macronutrient—fat—then that’s what your body is going to burn, and the hierarchy of macronutrient metabolism is washed out by a flood of dietary fat. So duh! you’ve got lots of ketones. Smoke ’em if ya got ’em, but to what end, if it’s not burning stored fat and you need to burn stored fat? If your daily needs are equivalent to 2,500 kcal but you’re eating 3,000+ because that’s part of the LC hustle—and quite easy to do with energy-dense fat—I assure you that you are not burning an ounce of your body fat, and you’re probably gaining fat—lots of ketones notwithstanding. Sound dumb?

And to reiterate, on the potato diet or keeping-with-the-theme variations thereof, it’s very low fat, so to the extent you drop pounds beyond the water loss, you pretty much know it’s fat since you aren’t eating much in the way of fat.Moreover, if you’re full, not hungry, and due to the extreme satiation of potatoes you find yourself in significant caloric deficit, you will produce ketones and for the same reason, you will know they are coming from your fat. No gimmick, no hustle, no chance of failure for normal people employing very fuzzy LC logic.

My Speculation About Why and How This Works

So what’s so magical about boiled potatoes? I’ve been asked this a lot, recently. I don’t think the satiation experiments lie and in my case, they’re understated. I’m easily running a 1,000+ kcal deficit with zero trouble at all. In fact, I’m having one helluva good time. Such liberation.

Yes, I know I could continue to believe and trust that my shoe heel is the best and most effective way to pound that nail, but it’s very relieving to have at my disposal a tool—like a hammer—that works, and appears to be perfectly suited for the job. So what if I have Jimmy Moore’s Syndrome, uh, reactive hypoglycemia, uh, I get cramps in my hand when I use a hammer (I get confused about all my excuses over why I just can’t)? Hand cramps will subside once I get used to using a hammer, i.e., the right tool for the job. Or, I could just say “effectivenailpoundingwithshoeheel buildstyle,” a lot. Keep repeating it to reinforce my solemn belief and trust.

Yes, potatoes appear to be substantially filling, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think there’s a neurological element. It could have something to do with the gut—especially for cooked and cooled, with higher resistant starch—but let’s just lump all possible elements into one, call them something like “palatability feedback.” It reminds me of the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears. The first bowl of porridge was too hot, thus unpalatable unless you wait; the second was too cold, more seriously unpalatable because more work is needed to reheat it, and the third bowl was just right.

But think about it. Food temperature is a large element of palatability, and it’s individual and sometimes, cultural too. To my dad, soup is cold unless it causes burn scar tissue on the roof or your mouth. I’m like the French. I like my soup just above warm. Gazpacho uses herbs & spice for cold palatability, and there are a few other kinds of soup specifically designed to be consumed cold, but otherwise, people find cold soup unpalatable. Its flavors and composition are the same, and this goes for all sorts of foods where temperature range strongly contributes to palatability.

But perhaps if you were out somewhere remote and had made a pot of delicious, soul-feeding soup, but then your gas ran out, you’d end up eating it cold. The question is, would you eat it all over the same space of time as you would have if you could have reheated every bowl to just right?

Initially, back when I blogged about The Potato Diet in league with Tim Steele, I just could not get my mind around eating boiled potatoes plain, or maybe with only a sprinkle of salt. You look at those posts and what you see is me doing everything to make them palatable enough to my mind, by various ways of preparing them, adding various bits of things. I didn’t eat a single whole boiled russet potato plain, not dolled up with anything, even salt, until last Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t awful. It wasn’t fabulous. I don’t know if “just right” is the correct description, but I knew I could do it.

But guess what? By the force of will of just doing it, they have become increasingly palatable by the day, and only with a sprinkle of salt, sometimes some malt vinegar too. But I eat more and more of them just plain, pushing out other options.

So, my conclusion is that boiled potatoes occupy some outlier niche where they’re mensch enough to give your stomach something substantial to feel, palatable enough to eat without choking them down (I drink plain, room temp water with them), but not so palatable that you’ll just normally gorge on them. In other words, when your stomach feels as though there’s enough of them in it, the palatability feedback shuts off, and you push it away.

And this suggests a potential cure for those few people who, in spite of eating lots of boiled potatoes, nonetheless feel ravenously hungry an hour later. What to do? Then you eat another potato, plain, no salt. Still a problem an hour later? Then eat another one, stone cold out of the fridge. In other words, every time you get that deep hunger eat the most unpalatable cold boiled potato possible until you’ve whipped your dumb dog brain into submission.

And verbalize it. “Ha, you stupid dog brain! You thought you were getting chocolate cake and ice cream, didn’t you? Ha, you dumb dog!” See, it’s rather like training your dog not to beg at the dinner table immediately after you fed him first. Sure, you can try to shame and submit him, order him around, etc. But what if you give him something off the table he doesn’t like at all?

See?

But Aren’t You Flirting With Malnutrition?

Back in 2007 or 2008 when I first got into this whole food thing, you may recall that Art De Vany was my introduction into it (via a blog commenter; kudos). Art called potatoes “a bag of glucose,” and I just took his word for it (not technically, of course, since it’s a starch, but I “knew” what he meant). It wasn’t until a few years later when Stephan Guyenet was blogging about potatoes that I learned that they’re a complete source of protein and a host of other nutrients, such that people can live on them exclusively for very long periods of time. Hell, my dad lived mostly on potatoes in war-torn and post-WWII Germany. He just turned 78, is in pristine health (they’re currently on a long, 2-month vacation hauling around a massive 5th wheel with an enormous Ford F-350 Diesel), and still loves his potatoes.

I was 5 years old in 1943, living with my grandparents in Wriezen, Germany. Potatoes where a big part of the daily diet. My grandparents had a rather large piece of property where they grew all of our vegetables and fruit: apples, cherries, grapes (which were mostly used for making wine), and berries. The main crop: potatoes. We also had laying hens for some animal protein & fat.

The thing that most profoundly sticks in my mind in terms of food is…potatoes, a lot of potatoes, at least during most of WWII. Later, toward the end of the warand after, food was so scarce that even potatoes weren’t very available. By then, I was 7 years old and was able to forage the fields and woods for anything that was edible. My grandmother—who lived to the ripe old age of 96—taught me what was good and what to avoid. I ate a lot of weeds made into sort of a spinach soup, flavored with bones and other stuff my grandmother scavenged from trash cans.

So let’s take a look at the nutrition. The other day, I decided to weigh my potato-only meals for the day, which was 2 pounds, 780 calories. For shits & giggles, I decided to run the nutrition on an equivalent caloric portion of beef steak. 785 calories is an 11 oz. steak. Before I show you the nutrition comparison, which one of those, 2 pounds of boiled potatoes, or an 11 oz. steak, is more likely to have you eating less of anything else that day?

Not so ridiculous now, is it?

So here again, we have absolute falsehoods being peddled out there. Why must people always substitute a nice-sounding, just-so narrative in place of facts or, more nefariously, to assure you that there’s no need to look even? It’s just a bag of glucose. But let’s set that aside and look at the bigger picture. What does that big picture up there suggest to you? How about meat & potatoes, for a nice, well-rounded nutritional distribution?

5 oz of beef steak and 1 pound of potatoes for 750 combined calories

Plugs up a few gaps, wouldn’t you say? It’s almost like we were meant to eat in more balanced ways. Incidentally, those two foods roughly split the calories. And hey, how about go to a 4 oz meat portion and take those fat and protein calories from that ounce of meat and put them in the potatoes as a little butter and whole milk. Mash ’em up?

Now who would’ve ever thought of that!?

May we dispense with the fallacy that potatoes are just empty sugar calories? You better, or I’m going to compare them to your 80% fat ketogenic diet where nutritionally, there’s just no fixing it. In that sense, you are talking about nearly empty fat calories, and your “leafy greens” aren’t going to be of much help unless you eat them by the pounds every day. What fun.

What I Ate Over Four Days That Caused Me To Drop 13 Pounds

I’ll preface this by saying this is what I did and what is very surprisingly working better than wild dreams, for me. You may be different. Or, you may be like the commenter who lost 26 pounds in a month. Keep in mind that once you begin to include plain boiled potatoes as something you eat often, you’ll likely lose your fear and loathing of them, and then the epiphany happens: I can eat a couple or more boiled potatoes in place of any meal in the world, at any time, no problem. This practice or habit is so liberating, and that’s what’s important. Keep the boiled potatoes in your fridge, and you have a complete meal in seconds, at any time.

Something else that’s important. If you have trouble losing weight you need to lose or have uncontrollable hunger, then double down and keep doubling down. Read the section about your dumb dog brain above, again. Also, let me remind you that Tim Steele is The Potato Diet master, literally writing the book on it, which you will all buy and read, no exceptions. Then you’ll buy copies for all your friends and family. You will not disappoint me in this matter. But whether you approach it like Tim, bottom-up style, or like me, top-down, just always remember that you can eat a boiled potato in place of anything, anytime.

So first of all, let me tell you what I didn’t eat or drink.

No alcohol. In fact, my last drop of the stuff was the prior Wednesday, so I was four days dry before even starting these shenanigans. And you know what? I just might make a habit of dependency out of this—perhaps just a nice cold pint of Stella on tap, or a decent Old Vine Zin with a steak, now and then. Just the improvement in sleep is enough just to dump regular drinking entirely. Also, not even a whiff of heartburn, ever. Last time I went a whole week with zero alcohol was my Movenat experience, back in 2010.

No drinks with calories at all. Water and black coffee—which is my standard way anyhow.

No snacks.

No added fat.

What I did eat mostly were my boiled potatoes. Plain, or with salt, or salt and malt vinegar. On average, 8-10 of those per day, and let me tell you how I ended up eating them. I boil them whole, in the skin. After I drain them, I let them cool a bit, and I’ll eat a couple nice & warm. I peel only the very outer layer of the skin with a pairing knife, and I eat them whole like one eats a hard-boiled egg. There’s something about biting off rather than slicing off what you eat.

The rest go into the fridge. Just toss ’em on a shelf. The skin is a great barrier, so they stay moist. I take out about 8-10 in the morning so they can attain ambient temperature and typically, I eat two at a sitting, sometimes three, and the first dose is sometime around 10-11:00, 14-16 hours since the evening meal.

…What’s this about high carbohydrate sending you trolling the cupboards and fridge over nagging hunger all the time?

I ate two big sweet oranges over the four days.

I ate one 14 oz. tub of Haagen-Dazs ice cream, split between 2 of the four nights (along with the two complete, 700-800-ish kcal balanced dinners I’ll show below).

And I ate my potato soup. Funny about that. In the first post, I had made a pot that I precisely calculated to 1,900 calories for the whole shebang. It was immediately apparent to me that I could not near eat that whole thing in a day, much less every day—even though doing so would put me at a 600 calorie deficit on average. I eat it two ways.

Soupy, right out of the pot.

Chunky, with an extra, peeled and cubed room temp potato. Bring the soup portion to a boil and pour it over the cubed potato. The heat exchange makes it instantly “just right.”

OK, here’s the recipe. Now let me tell you, this is very close to the recipe I grew up with, and I think my mom got it from my German grandmother, “Oma.” At any rate, in its original way, it was an inexpensive dish; peasant food, or perhaps war-torn Germany food…and if you could scrounge a little bacon, a little goes one hell of a long way for flavor. Now, unfortunately, it’s morphed into three times the calories per serving with a pound of cubed polish sausage instead of a few slices of bacon drained of fat, heavy cream instead of milk, and to top it off, a half handful of grated cheddar cheese.

What’s even worse is that either of those above bowls satisfy me for hours. Two, sometimes three ladle full, but most often just two. In the current morphology? It’s so damn insanely palatable that you’ll go back for a second huge bowl. So, in one step, you’ve taken what would be satisfying at X calories and ended up eating 6X calories. And you know what? I prefer it this way anyway. It takes me back, and perhaps that two is an element of palatability. I get just the right balance between soupy and creamy, I think.

2 cloves of fresh, peeled and crushed garlic (crushing with the heel of your hand is sufficient)

2 tablespoons of dried parsley (triple that for fresh)

Salt & ground pepper to taste

1-quart chicken stock (I use Kitchen Basics; the best tasting on the supermarket shelf, and with 4g protein per cup—5g for the beef stock)

1 cup whole milk

Preparation (~45 minutes)

Put potato, onion, bacon, garlic, and parsley in a large pot. Add chicken stock. For a thicker soup, add just enough water just to cover the ingredients by 1/3 inch. For soupier soup, cover by about an inch (you can always add water later…or reduce if you have to). I like it soupy to creamy, never thick, so I’m at an inch to start with and go from there.

Bring to a boil covered, reduce heat and go for about 30 minutes. Turn the heat to low and mash. If you dare use a stick blender and make a damn purée out of it, then we can’t be friends. Use a standard potato masher, please. Mash to about 3/4 creamy, leaving plenty of bits and chunks.

Add the milk, stir, then salt & pepper to taste. This is a dish that soaks up salt nicely. Best to add 1/4 tsp at a time until you get it just right.

So I made some nutritional comparisons. Here’s the nutrition breakdown of the pot of potato soup.

I know it’s slightly “unfair,” because of course, one can also add other nutrients to the LCHF and Keto spreads, but this is just for a general comparative idea. That said, what do you have to work with? Proteins are super high in a few nutrients, as you can see, but also deficient in a not insignificant number. Fat is pretty nutrient vapid (“empty calories”), which is why, when you go from just standard LCHF to ketogenic—where you have to get protein way down—along with carbohydrate being near nil already, you’re significantly compromising nutrition. Better get in some beef liver, I guess.

Does it matter? Who knows? I prefer to go with the evolutionary record of man as an omnivorous dietary generalist who can migrate to almost anywhere and thrive. But more to the point, we do have excellent, modern day examples of the most long-lived, healthy people we’ve ever had any idea of. Blue Zones. I remember dismissing it when I first heard about it, 2008-ish. Nobody in Paleo talked about it, kinda pretended it didn’t exist, wasn’t relevant, wasn’t convenient, too counter-narrative…whatever. Instead, people talked about tooth scrapings on fossils and discarded bones next to the latrine. Make sense? Not to me. Not anymore.

…Alright, to wrap this up, I mentioned above that I had two regular, nice dinners. Some weeks back, we got a subscription to Plated.com, which I blogged about here. Each Monday a guy drives up and hands me a box with three complete meals for 2 people. It’s beyond fabulous for us, given our off-grid living at a construction site in an RV with its micro-kitchen. So there’s that, and also a compromise with Bea, so she’s not overly burdened with my dietary peccadillos. In return, she eats some of the potato soup and has even joined in a time or two for an all-plain-potato meal.

So yeah, three times per week I’m doing regular, nicely balanced, 700-800-ish calorie meals. Nope, I’m not going all Don Matesz off the deep end on you. Here were Monday and Wednesday nights.

Now, either I got lucky with those two meals over four days, still dumping all that weight, or it doesn’t matter, or it will matter. But at this point, making adjustments is zero problem. Should that, and even the potato soup, hamper anything where I’m not netting 2-3 pounds weight off weekly on the magic carpet ride to one-sixty-five, then one, two, or all three of those meals will be the first to go, pushed out by boiled potatoes.

Alright. Are we done, here? Yea, I think we’re done here.

Except one thing: I don’t typically beg that you share my posts on social media. I am this time. This can help tons of your friends and family. Just do it.

Potato Diet Update: Hit the gym this morning for another session of Dr. Doug McGuff’s “Big 5,” which is leg press, chest press, sitting upright row, lat pulldowns, and shoulder press. I currently do a single set of each, with weight for a 25-30 rep range. Over time, I’ll keep upping the weight until I’m in the 15-20 rep range and then up weight accordingly to stay in that range.

It’s a great and efficient weight program. Hits everything important very adequately. Takes 10-15 minutes. 1-2x per week is plenty.

So, weigh in. I began The Potato Diet (see freetheanimal.com for details) last Sunday this time, and tipped the scale at 203. Thursday, 4 days later, I was at a surprising 190, a 13 pound drop (mostly water, the blog post explains how/why) and today, another 3 days later, 4 more down, for a total of 17 pounds in a week, easily rivaling what you’d do on a water-only week long fast.

I did this without undue hunger. When hungry, I eat a boiled potato. Could not be simpler. Still hungry? Eat another. It’s food, and complete and nutritious food at that. Oh, your brain was expecting a reward of pizza and beer because life is so hard and you “worked out?” Well, here’s a nutritious potato, stupid dog brain. Adequate food for hunger, right, stupid dog brain? Or, were you lying to me again, like you always do?

This really intrigues me now more than ever because I went from 154-125 rather quickly eating paleo and coconut oil+cream coffee. Well not so much anymore. I gained weight and I’ve been stuck at 138 since November going up 5lbs and back down to 138 constantly. Frankly I’m sick of it. I downloaded myfitnesspal and it suggests I need to eat 1200 cals a day to get back down to 125. I tried to eat nothing but potatoes for one day and I felt starving all day. Maybe I didn’t eat enough potatoes? I’m not sure but the hunger pains were unbelievable.

There were groups I relied on for advice but now I’m feeling a bit lost. I know what they’d all say just go on a fat fast and eat gobs more fat. Well that’s not working anymore and the idea of eating that much fat doesn’t satisfy me like it use to. I think I’m still eating too much fat for this experiment to work. According to myfitnesspal yesterday the grams of each looked like this 101g carbs, 48g fat and 46g of protein. I haven’t been adding any fat unless it’s too cook in the skillet (like brussel sprouts) but I think it’s the cream in my coffee that’s doing it. I just don’t know how to make coffee palatable without cream. I’ve cut back from who knows how much probably a good 4-5T of cream to 2T each cup (I have about two cups but today I’ll try one ).

My reply:

You have to try potatoes only, and dump the calorie counter. If you can’t drink coffee without cream or milk, dump that too. In fact, room temp water and hot black coffee in the AM is all I have been drinking. Of course, I’ve always had my coffee black.

Boiled (only), cooled in fridge, then room temp potatoes only, with salt and/or malt vinegar, if you like, with room temp water. Most importantly, eat one if you’re hungry, or two or three. Don’t be painfully hungry. This is not a cal counting potato diet. This is a potato diet where I dare you to eat enough that way to maintain your weight over the space of a week or two.

In fact, you should try to not lose weight, but only on potatoes eaten just like that. I bet you can’t do it.

Prove me wrong.

See the difference of approach?

I’ll expound upon this in a post next week. Seeing some human error problems being created for solving the underlying problems that potatoes only are designed to fix. Stupid dog brains always sabotage.

Have you considered or investigated the impact of the significant change in your ratio of sodium/potassium intake? You are probably getting more than 10,000 mg of potassium when you are consuming several pounds of potatoes, and this might me part of the answer to shedding water weight.

Occam’s Razor and the fact of running a 1,000+ kcal deficit over 4 days tends to make me dismiss it as of major significance. ESPECIALLY if it’s any sort of defense of LC being The Only Way to dump water.

Perhaps it contributes a bit, but I can’t for the life of me understand why I should give a single hoot.

I do tend to have elevated BP though. Accordingly, the water dump plus the added P ought help with that…I’ll start measuring next week sometime just to confirm what I already suspect.

I know this is an older post, but my experience may be relevant here. I recently did the potato hack. By day 2, I had lost an enormous amount of water weight (peeing what felt like 10 times my normal amount). I became extremely weak and listless and recognized the feeling as a lack of electrolytes. Since I’d been using copious amounts of salt on my potatoes, I decided I might need potassium (despite knowing the higher potassium content of potatoes). I took a little spoon of potassium chloride in some water and felt totally revived after about 15 minutes. Richard, I too thought only LC could result in this kind of water dump, so I was really surprised. I actually really needed to lose some of that water, as I tend to retain too much normally, so maybe it was the elimination of all food intolerances that created this effect for me. As soon as I ate anything else (fat-free, low-starch vegetables, cooked in fat-free chicken broth), I regained the water and most of the weight. Post potato-hack, I’m still eating a decent amount of cooked and cooled potatoes, mainly because I believe they are healthy and might contribute somewhat to weight loss over the long-term. For me though, the potato hack weight loss was primarily (though not all) water.

Great post!
So I’m sitting on the couch eating potato chips while reading this. (I know..idiot!) I read the previous article where chips are bad. I got to thinking, I have a list of potato dishes. It might be of help to others. I keep the list for ideas of what to make from potatoes in my garden ar harvest time. I know some are not allowed (chips!) If they aren’t allowed, can they be fixed?
Baked Potato, Mashed, Fries, Home Fries, Hash Browns, Potato Pancakes, Scalloped, Pan roasted new potatoes, potato salad, au gratin, potato quiche, casserole, CHIPS, and last but not least, soup.
Any ideas?

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If you don’t need to do either or it’s mild, you can be more flexible.

I have zero problem with the hunger, just another 20-25 pounds to lose. I sit here at 10:52 and have not eaten a bite of anyting since that spaghetti squash Bolognese last night at 7:30. Just getting mild hunger now and set out a half dozen large red potatoes I boiled yesterday, ate three of, and popped the rest in the fridge. So that hunger and cravings part I have pretty licked.

The takeaway is that I ate mostly potatoes most of the time. BTW, you got a number of those numbers wrong. But no matter, I ate mostly potatoes with only salt &or vinegar most of the time. And even the potato soup is 3/4 calories from potatoes.

Sorry, it was 2 oranges. I knew I couldn’t remember the exact amount and couldn’t be arsed to go back an reread which I should have done. I did reread everything once again just now.

However, I don’t think I missed the forest through the trees. The whole thing we’ve been waiting for the past several days is what you ate over those 4 days, but all of the specific things you ate were scattered through the last half or 2/3s of the post. Hence why I wanted to collect it all into one place to examine and even admire in the context of the first half of your post where you explain everything. It was a great post, great knowledge passing.

I do want to add I first tried the potato hack a few months ago and couldn’t abide it. I think the problem was that I was baking the potatoes and they were just too dried out to become minimally palatable without a lot of extra “help”. That clearly won’t be a problem with boiling so thats the next thing I will try.

This may work for you. Or you may not care. Thanks to you I’ve been eating lots of potatoes. Mostly plain for snacks. Them being dry was a problem but I handled it. I decided to wrap them tightly in foil before baking one night. I had them prepared like that in Italy with salt and olive oil in the foil. This time I decided to skip the olive oil and salt.

I haven’t way overcooked them so I’m not sure it’s foolproof but both russet and golds work great so far. Especially golds. Since they’re wrapped tightly, I can just grab a couple and throw them in my laptop bag. Add salt and pepper.

At home the spices vary, always salt plus something. Smoked paprika, turmeric and black pepper, Sriracha, garam masala, curry powder, malt vinegar. Been doing this for almost a year now. It’s great.

Thanks to this post, may have to cut out all the other food during the week.

Thank you for the post. I am also interested in your nutrional adventures and results. The follow may be a dumb question, but my background and degrees are in finance and economics, not nutrition. I just used two tablespoons of avocado oil to coat 5 lbs of russet potatoes, then grilled them. Would there be any difference in impact on weight loss, gut improvement, nutrition, etc. from using boiled potatoes? If you have written about this before, please point me to the post. Thanks for what you do.

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No added fat is the whole point of this. You’ll have a hard time retraining your dumb dog brain if you add fat to stuff. And even going forward. A little to cook with is fine when necessary. Otherwise, get your fat from the fat in the food you eat. Generally, beef is about 50% fat calories? Not enough already?

There are myriad ways to cook potatoes without any fat. Try some of those first.

Now, you may not need to lose any or much weight, in which case this might not be so crucial for you. But for those who two, two fucking hard & fast rulz:

1. No added fat.

2. Don’t drink any calories. In fact, room temperature water ought be your primary and only beverage if you are in dire straights.

Eat your cooked, cooled, and then room temperature potatoes plain (not even any salt or vinegar at first) along with room temperature water.

Wouldn’t doubt it. Baked are probably just as good. I dunno. I just like the idea of doing it old style, and boiling makes it very easy to peel off just the micro-thin outer skin. Perhaps I’ll build a fire in the fire ring and set out a bunch around the ring. Now that’s really old style. ;)

Plus, if bake them, scoop out and eat the flesh, I will surely be tempted to flatten out the skins and fry them in butter, then sprinkle sea salt on them. Forget I told you about that.

Hi Richard, cool stuff.
Is there a potato substitute you might recommend for people who don’t digest potato well. I’ve tried for many years with potato, all varieties, no skin, plain boiled, warm and cold. Even a 1/2 cup or so will bloat out my stomach and it will ache for many hours. Same for sweet potato. It’s a bummer, cuz I love potato and the simplicity. I seem to tolerate lentils okay. Beans, less so.

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I just salt on them. Never condiments. I only drink water, and just a little with meals. I will try strict potato only for a couple days. I’ll be hungry though, as like right now, I ate my small potato only meal yesterday around 7, and as of noonish, even though I am hungry, no way can I put more potato in. Stomach says ouch, NO. I will let you know how it goes!

Thanks Steven. I can’t figure it out, as I tolerate other foods like fruits, lentils and even wheat just fine, but have a similar bad reaction to butternut squash and avacado. It’s confounding. I’ll just have to keep dinking around.

Richard, I don’t tolerate rice well either. Even “super safe starch” white rice. But like you said, I was thinking that when I was young my mom served a baked potato at every fucking meal, at it was fine. So maybe it’s a “use it or lose it” deal with digesting some foods.

Maybe I’ll try to introduce potato more slowly before going full on potato hack. For now, I finally had to take a couple teaspoons of sugar, just so I could “fart it out” and at least get some pain relief.

Richard, great post (as usual when you discuss diet related issues)! Like you, I just can’t seem to lose those last 20/30 pounds. I have recommended a Paleo like diet to a number of friends (for some strange reason, almost always female) that have seen their weight just melt off – to the tune of the two to six dress sizes – amazing. For a male friend and I, no positive results weight wise at all – though I feel much better.

My question – any other improvement in health markers you have noticed? For example, smaller waist etc? My biggest issue right now is belly fat….

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Oh yea, loss of puffiness all over, looser pants, leaner thighs. For guys like me who store their fat around the middle, that’s always the last to go. However, it is getting spongier. Way less dense feeling.

Seriously (and I really was kidding), thanks for the potato soup recipe. I may be eating a lot of potatoes lately, as I just got laid off from my job today. Cheap, nutritious, and filling? Perfect peasant food for someone who just dropped out of the bourgeoisie! :thumbsup:

What I’m advocating for, really, is the inclusion of a lot of boiled potato in your diet. What your needs are in terms of hunger control and/or weight loss and how much, determines how best to use them as a tool.

If you have hunger control issues and a lot of weight to lose, then please start with boiled, cooled, and up to room temp potatoes with room temp water only, please. If you’re not going hours between potato meals because too hungry, then you’re “stupid dog brain” is not yet on a short enough leash or caged.

This is not the time for Freeing the Animal.

In general, I would like to see people moving to cooking foods in such a way as to not require a lot of fat (like soups, stews, roasts, grilled, etc). But most of all, the minimizing of adding fat to anything, save a little raw olive oil on salads, or perhaps a sane amount of butter on whole grain breads or in mashed potatoes.

Seneca said we should live a few days on a simple diet to establish business relationship with poverty.

From Seneca’s letters (letter 18 on fasting):

For though water, barley-meal, and crusts of barley-bread, are not a cheerful diet, yet it is the highest kind of Pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food, and to have reduced one’s needs to that modicum which no unfairness of Fortune can snatch away. 11. Even prison fare is more generous; and those who have been set apart for capital punishment are not so meanly fed by the man who is to execute them. Therefore, what a noble soul must one have, to descend of one’s own free will to a diet which even those who have been sentenced to death have not to fear! This is indeed forestalling the spearthrusts of Fortune.
12 So begin, my dear Lucilius, to follow the custom of these men, and set apart certain days on which you shall withdraw from your business and make yourself at home with the scantiest fare.

business relations with poverty.

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Nope. The whole point is to have a significant portion, like about 8-10 potatoes daily (emphasizing that this is for me; I don’t have 60+ pounds to lose and my hunger impulses are well under control, going 14-16 hours minimum every single last bite to fist bite overnight without a single care) be from the least palatable form of potato.

Yea, I was probably getting 800-1,200 max daily from potatoes, on the days I did those meals, they were around 700, but I ate fewer potatoes. Still overall under 1500 and my average requirement is 2500.

Nice post. I think anyone who is interested in seeing where they can go with the potato hack should strive to do a day or three of strict potato-only.

Whether it’s the lack of all fats, the “perfect” ratios of nutrients that only a potato can provide, the megadose of potato antiioxidants, the KYNA, chlorogenic acid, or whatever, it frikking works. Very well.

I think that a potato-heavy diet like you have been doing leads to lowered inflammation and a super-diverse gut flora. Easy ways to implement this are all-potato meals, potato-only days here and there, or a flat-out 3-5 day Potato Hack that I have been harping on for 4 or 5 years now.

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You said, “…I love cold pizza. Beatrice hates it, so she nukes it, making the crust all awfully spongy.”
This is on a site I believe I heard of from you. I have tried their recommended best practice. Covered in a frying pan on modest heat for a crisp crust. Be careful not to burn the crust. Works great.artofmanliness.com/2014/09/25/the-best-way-to-reheat-pizza/

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Have you considered or investigated the impact of the significant change in your ratio of sodium/potassium intake? You are probably getting more than 10,000 mg of potassium when you are consuming several pounds of potatoes, and this might me part of the answer to shedding water weight.

Occam’s Razor and the fact of running a 1,000+ kcal deficit over 4 days tends to make me dismiss it as of major significance. ESPECIALLY if it’s any sort of defense of LC being The Only Way to dump water.

Perhaps it contributes a bit, but I can’t for the life of me understand why I should give a single hoot.

I do tend to have elevated BP though. Accordingly, the water dump plus the added P ought help with that…I’ll start measuring next week sometime just to confirm what I already suspect.

I know this is an older post, but my experience may be relevant here. I recently did the potato hack. By day 2, I had lost an enormous amount of water weight (peeing what felt like 10 times my normal amount). I became extremely weak and listless and recognized the feeling as a lack of electrolytes. Since I’d been using copious amounts of salt on my potatoes, I decided I might need potassium (despite knowing the higher potassium content of potatoes). I took a little spoon of potassium chloride in some water and felt totally revived after about 15 minutes. Richard, I too thought only LC could result in this kind of water dump, so I was really surprised. I actually really needed to lose some of that water, as I tend to retain too much normally, so maybe it was the elimination of all food intolerances that created this effect for me. As soon as I ate anything else (fat-free, low-starch vegetables, cooked in fat-free chicken broth), I regained the water and most of the weight. Post potato-hack, I’m still eating a decent amount of cooked and cooled potatoes, mainly because I believe they are healthy and might contribute somewhat to weight loss over the long-term. For me though, the potato hack weight loss was primarily (though not all) water.

Great post!
So I’m sitting on the couch eating potato chips while reading this. (I know..idiot!) I read the previous article where chips are bad. I got to thinking, I have a list of potato dishes. It might be of help to others. I keep the list for ideas of what to make from potatoes in my garden ar harvest time. I know some are not allowed (chips!) If they aren’t allowed, can they be fixed?
Baked Potato, Mashed, Fries, Home Fries, Hash Browns, Potato Pancakes, Scalloped, Pan roasted new potatoes, potato salad, au gratin, potato quiche, casserole, CHIPS, and last but not least, soup.
Any ideas?

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If you don’t need to do either or it’s mild, you can be more flexible.

I have zero problem with the hunger, just another 20-25 pounds to lose. I sit here at 10:52 and have not eaten a bite of anyting since that spaghetti squash Bolognese last night at 7:30. Just getting mild hunger now and set out a half dozen large red potatoes I boiled yesterday, ate three of, and popped the rest in the fridge. So that hunger and cravings part I have pretty licked.

The takeaway is that I ate mostly potatoes most of the time. BTW, you got a number of those numbers wrong. But no matter, I ate mostly potatoes with only salt &or vinegar most of the time. And even the potato soup is 3/4 calories from potatoes.

Sorry, it was 2 oranges. I knew I couldn’t remember the exact amount and couldn’t be arsed to go back an reread which I should have done. I did reread everything once again just now.

However, I don’t think I missed the forest through the trees. The whole thing we’ve been waiting for the past several days is what you ate over those 4 days, but all of the specific things you ate were scattered through the last half or 2/3s of the post. Hence why I wanted to collect it all into one place to examine and even admire in the context of the first half of your post where you explain everything. It was a great post, great knowledge passing.

I do want to add I first tried the potato hack a few months ago and couldn’t abide it. I think the problem was that I was baking the potatoes and they were just too dried out to become minimally palatable without a lot of extra “help”. That clearly won’t be a problem with boiling so thats the next thing I will try.

This may work for you. Or you may not care. Thanks to you I’ve been eating lots of potatoes. Mostly plain for snacks. Them being dry was a problem but I handled it. I decided to wrap them tightly in foil before baking one night. I had them prepared like that in Italy with salt and olive oil in the foil. This time I decided to skip the olive oil and salt.

I haven’t way overcooked them so I’m not sure it’s foolproof but both russet and golds work great so far. Especially golds. Since they’re wrapped tightly, I can just grab a couple and throw them in my laptop bag. Add salt and pepper.

At home the spices vary, always salt plus something. Smoked paprika, turmeric and black pepper, Sriracha, garam masala, curry powder, malt vinegar. Been doing this for almost a year now. It’s great.

Thanks to this post, may have to cut out all the other food during the week.

Thank you for the post. I am also interested in your nutrional adventures and results. The follow may be a dumb question, but my background and degrees are in finance and economics, not nutrition. I just used two tablespoons of avocado oil to coat 5 lbs of russet potatoes, then grilled them. Would there be any difference in impact on weight loss, gut improvement, nutrition, etc. from using boiled potatoes? If you have written about this before, please point me to the post. Thanks for what you do.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

No added fat is the whole point of this. You’ll have a hard time retraining your dumb dog brain if you add fat to stuff. And even going forward. A little to cook with is fine when necessary. Otherwise, get your fat from the fat in the food you eat. Generally, beef is about 50% fat calories? Not enough already?

There are myriad ways to cook potatoes without any fat. Try some of those first.

Now, you may not need to lose any or much weight, in which case this might not be so crucial for you. But for those who two, two fucking hard & fast rulz:

1. No added fat.

2. Don’t drink any calories. In fact, room temperature water ought be your primary and only beverage if you are in dire straights.

Eat your cooked, cooled, and then room temperature potatoes plain (not even any salt or vinegar at first) along with room temperature water.

Wouldn’t doubt it. Baked are probably just as good. I dunno. I just like the idea of doing it old style, and boiling makes it very easy to peel off just the micro-thin outer skin. Perhaps I’ll build a fire in the fire ring and set out a bunch around the ring. Now that’s really old style. ;)

Plus, if bake them, scoop out and eat the flesh, I will surely be tempted to flatten out the skins and fry them in butter, then sprinkle sea salt on them. Forget I told you about that.

Hi Richard, cool stuff.
Is there a potato substitute you might recommend for people who don’t digest potato well. I’ve tried for many years with potato, all varieties, no skin, plain boiled, warm and cold. Even a 1/2 cup or so will bloat out my stomach and it will ache for many hours. Same for sweet potato. It’s a bummer, cuz I love potato and the simplicity. I seem to tolerate lentils okay. Beans, less so.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

I just salt on them. Never condiments. I only drink water, and just a little with meals. I will try strict potato only for a couple days. I’ll be hungry though, as like right now, I ate my small potato only meal yesterday around 7, and as of noonish, even though I am hungry, no way can I put more potato in. Stomach says ouch, NO. I will let you know how it goes!

Thanks Steven. I can’t figure it out, as I tolerate other foods like fruits, lentils and even wheat just fine, but have a similar bad reaction to butternut squash and avacado. It’s confounding. I’ll just have to keep dinking around.

Richard, I don’t tolerate rice well either. Even “super safe starch” white rice. But like you said, I was thinking that when I was young my mom served a baked potato at every fucking meal, at it was fine. So maybe it’s a “use it or lose it” deal with digesting some foods.

Maybe I’ll try to introduce potato more slowly before going full on potato hack. For now, I finally had to take a couple teaspoons of sugar, just so I could “fart it out” and at least get some pain relief.

Richard, great post (as usual when you discuss diet related issues)! Like you, I just can’t seem to lose those last 20/30 pounds. I have recommended a Paleo like diet to a number of friends (for some strange reason, almost always female) that have seen their weight just melt off – to the tune of the two to six dress sizes – amazing. For a male friend and I, no positive results weight wise at all – though I feel much better.

My question – any other improvement in health markers you have noticed? For example, smaller waist etc? My biggest issue right now is belly fat….

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Oh yea, loss of puffiness all over, looser pants, leaner thighs. For guys like me who store their fat around the middle, that’s always the last to go. However, it is getting spongier. Way less dense feeling.

Seriously (and I really was kidding), thanks for the potato soup recipe. I may be eating a lot of potatoes lately, as I just got laid off from my job today. Cheap, nutritious, and filling? Perfect peasant food for someone who just dropped out of the bourgeoisie! :thumbsup:

What I’m advocating for, really, is the inclusion of a lot of boiled potato in your diet. What your needs are in terms of hunger control and/or weight loss and how much, determines how best to use them as a tool.

If you have hunger control issues and a lot of weight to lose, then please start with boiled, cooled, and up to room temp potatoes with room temp water only, please. If you’re not going hours between potato meals because too hungry, then you’re “stupid dog brain” is not yet on a short enough leash or caged.

This is not the time for Freeing the Animal.

In general, I would like to see people moving to cooking foods in such a way as to not require a lot of fat (like soups, stews, roasts, grilled, etc). But most of all, the minimizing of adding fat to anything, save a little raw olive oil on salads, or perhaps a sane amount of butter on whole grain breads or in mashed potatoes.

Seneca said we should live a few days on a simple diet to establish business relationship with poverty.

From Seneca’s letters (letter 18 on fasting):

For though water, barley-meal, and crusts of barley-bread, are not a cheerful diet, yet it is the highest kind of Pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food, and to have reduced one’s needs to that modicum which no unfairness of Fortune can snatch away. 11. Even prison fare is more generous; and those who have been set apart for capital punishment are not so meanly fed by the man who is to execute them. Therefore, what a noble soul must one have, to descend of one’s own free will to a diet which even those who have been sentenced to death have not to fear! This is indeed forestalling the spearthrusts of Fortune.
12 So begin, my dear Lucilius, to follow the custom of these men, and set apart certain days on which you shall withdraw from your business and make yourself at home with the scantiest fare.

business relations with poverty.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Nope. The whole point is to have a significant portion, like about 8-10 potatoes daily (emphasizing that this is for me; I don’t have 60+ pounds to lose and my hunger impulses are well under control, going 14-16 hours minimum every single last bite to fist bite overnight without a single care) be from the least palatable form of potato.

Yea, I was probably getting 800-1,200 max daily from potatoes, on the days I did those meals, they were around 700, but I ate fewer potatoes. Still overall under 1500 and my average requirement is 2500.

Nice post. I think anyone who is interested in seeing where they can go with the potato hack should strive to do a day or three of strict potato-only.

Whether it’s the lack of all fats, the “perfect” ratios of nutrients that only a potato can provide, the megadose of potato antiioxidants, the KYNA, chlorogenic acid, or whatever, it frikking works. Very well.

I think that a potato-heavy diet like you have been doing leads to lowered inflammation and a super-diverse gut flora. Easy ways to implement this are all-potato meals, potato-only days here and there, or a flat-out 3-5 day Potato Hack that I have been harping on for 4 or 5 years now.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

You said, “…I love cold pizza. Beatrice hates it, so she nukes it, making the crust all awfully spongy.”
This is on a site I believe I heard of from you. I have tried their recommended best practice. Covered in a frying pan on modest heat for a crisp crust. Be careful not to burn the crust. Works great.artofmanliness.com/2014/09/25/the-best-way-to-reheat-pizza/

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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